Cursed
by Neighsay
Summary: High School AU, a group of friends are cursed after one of them was attacked by an unknown source. To relief themselves of the curse, they had to destroy whatever it is that had cursed them in the first place, even if it means putting a new kid's life at risk.
1. Chapter 1

"Come on, you scared?" a teen teased his friend as they stood outside a rumored-to-be-haunted house.

The questioned teen then shook his head, he talked himself into this. It was him who wanted to follow them and tried to be part of a group. But he wasn't expecting the initiation to be like this.

"Don't back up on me now, Kuosu." a girl from the group growled as she was growing impatient, standing under the sun wasn't good for her skin.

Without saying another word, Kuosu took the first step into the house. He shook the moment the door creaked open but didn't back down. The inside of the house looked really dark despite light shining through the open windows. The thing that chilled Kuosu the most was the chandelier, it looked as if they was a body hanging on it.

'It's probably just a sheet or something.' with that thought in mind, he decided to head towards the stairs.

Two seconds into walking up the stairs, the door slammed shut, Kuosu jumped before feeling something crushing his neck.

-Outside-

"Whoa, what was that?!" a boy with cream-coloured hair jumped as he heard the door slam shut.

The previous teens started pulling on the door when they heard Kuosu's scream. When that didn't work, they pushed, to no avail, the door won't open. The screaming got louder as time dragged on.

"Stand back!" the teen said and proceeded to kick the door.

"Gamma, it's not going to work!" the purple-haired teen, the one that teased Kuosu, stated.

Though Gamma was not willing to give up, his best friend was trapped in there and he is going to blame himself if his friend is found dead.

-Inside-

Kuosu couldn't see whoever it is that was crushing his neck, though by trying to push them away, he can then tell whoever it is, it is a girl. Judging by her height, she was probably just a tad older than him or maybe even the same age as he is. The girl has long fingernails digging into Kuosu's skin to the point Kuosu think it might be a possibility to just bleed from the small wounds around his neck.

"You shouldn't have come here." the voice sounded sweet, almost like a fairy tale princess's.

The grip on his neck loosened as the door busted opened. In a flash, the figure before him disappeared, and his friends all came running towards him.

"Kuosu! Are you okay?! Answer me!" Gamma shook his head as he saw the girl take Kuosu by the shoulder and started shaking him violently.

"Beta, you're going to kill him before he even gets to wake up." Gamma stated blankly as he saw Alpha look around the whole place.

-Dorm Room-

The four of them went back to their dormitory and changed out of their school uniforms. Though Kuosu sat on his bed holding his knees against his chest, still too shaken up about what he saw in that damn house. When he told his friends what happened, they didn't believe him and thought he was just hallucinating out of fear. He took a look around the house and sure enough, it was empty. But when he entered the house was filled with old furniture, and the hanging chandelier was gone as well, so is the girl.

As much as he should feel relieved about it, he just felt even more uncomfortable, the feeling of those hands tightening around his neck still lingers, and he even have the bruises still. Alpha resorted to believing that he must've had something that just made him hallucinate and choke himself to rid of whatever he saw.

"Hey, you okay?" Gamma placed a hand on his best friend's shoulder, he barely and almost never see Kuosu shaken up over something like this before.

Okay, maybe that one time but he wasn't going to relieve that particular memory after Kuosu tried so hard to forget whatever happened in the past.

"I've been better." Kuosu won't show that he's weak.

Gamma knows exactly what it feels like to be weak in front of others, he himself had put up an arrogant front so he wouldn't seem he was affected by his parents' words. Putting up with his bullies so as now even they feared he might be insane when he laughed after he was beaten up.

"Hey, bros! What's happenin'?!" of course, someone just had to burst in uninvited and who else would it be but Gamma's boyfriend.


	2. Chapter 2

As Gamma and Zanark started arguing in their own world, Kuosu noticed a figure standing at his bed side. Too afraid to look, he tugged on Alpha's sleeve. Pointing to where he last saw the figure, Alpha shook his head and stated he saw nothing.

"Maybe it's just a shadow or something." Alpha tried to reassure Kuosu.

Kuosu nodded, trying to shake the feeling that he was being watched. Meanwhile, Beta had here nose buried in her chemistry book, her hands jolting down notes while her eyes stuck themselves to the contents of the book. How she managed to write without looking was beyond Kuosu's knowledge. She even had a perfect mark in her handwriting when they were in elementary.

"Again, we will appreciate it if you didn't try to bust the door off it's hinges again." Gamma told Zanark as he pushed him out of their shared room.

"I thought he'd never leave." Alpha stated as he flopped onto his bunk bed.

From time to time, Gamma noticed that Kuosu would look from his laptop to his bed side. He wanted to ask what made him so jumpy but was afraid of making him feel forced to answer. When Kuosu wewnt back to typing out his assignment, Gamma relaxed a little and tried to work on his project.

It wasn't long for them to fall asleep in weird positions...

A spine-chilling shriek out of the blue woke them up. At first, they all thought it was probably Kuosu, who had been having a hard time ever since they stepped away from the mansion.

What they didn't expect to see was a girl, no... A woman, dressed in her nightgown, hovering above Kuosu as she held his throat tightly. Beta did the first thing she thought of. She turned on the lights, grabbed a book and threw it in the woman's direction. The book went through the woman's body and hit Gamma in the head.

"Hey! You can't throw things at a ghost! It goes right through them!" Gamma complained as he lifted himself off the ground and grabbed a mirror from hid drawer.

"Let's hope this works." without another word, he shone the mirror in the ghost's direction.

Letting out a screech, the woman disappeared with in a puff of smoke.

Alpha, Kuosu and Beta looked at where the ghost-woman was before turning their heads to stare at Gamma.

"How'd you know that would work?" Kuosu managed to find his voice to ask.

"I didn't." Gamma put the mirror back into the drawer before sitting down at his desk.

None of them could sleep that night, they were too shook to even close their eyes. The moment they did, each of them had different images in their head. Like a broken tape rewinding in a loop over and over again. The images displayed in their head was too hard to get rid off.

They stayed awake for the rest of the night, hoping the ghost wouldn't return to haunt them.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

"Wait, you're saying you actually saw a woman-like ghost in your dorm the other night?" Orca asked after the four told her the story that happened the night before.

They all had dark bags under their eyes due to lack of sleep. They had tried to stay awake during the first period, only to fall sleep when they were 37 minutes into the first lesson. Getting detention was not something they usually did, but Gamma was used to going to detention even when he didn't get detention. Usually telling his friends and the teacher in charge that detention was the only place he could focus on his homework.

"Didn't you know that place is haunted?!" Dorimu exclaimed as he slid into the seat next to his girlfriend.

"Rumor has it, whoever enters the mansion will see a fully-furnished, dusty scene. There is a little girl as well, if whoever enters can see the little girl, she will then tell them they shouldn't have gone there in the first place. The person is then cursed, to be followed by the girl's mother if they leave the mansion." as Dorimu continued down the tale of how the curse began, Kuosu could feel his whole body shaking in fear.

"The only way to break the curse, is to seek out the little girl, without the mother ever seeing you with her." Alpha squinted his eyes in thought.

"It's like a game of hide-and-seek, with a twist. The mother doesn't know you are playing, and think that you would want to harm her little girl." Gamma now was thinking deeply.

He remembered when he would always call his brothers to play hide-and-seek in the dark with him. Their mother would be furious, mainly because they always leave the house without permission. The punishment? He could always remember, his brothers would get off scott-free because they were dragged into the game they didn't want to play in the first place.

"Here's the hard part, you MUST play in the mansion. Do not leave until you have completed the game. If you do, then the mother will kill you on the spot. She thinks you are leading her little girl into danger. The reason you saw the mother last night was because you started the game the moment you entered the house. The little girl was 'it'. She found you, then you were 'it'." Beta now had a wondering thought.

"She said 'You shouldn't have come here, what did that mean then?" Orca then decided to add in her opinion.

"Maybe it's because people have actually died the moment they started the game." Kuosu tried to process what the couple had said.

He had a burning question he wanted to ask. But as soon as he opened his mouth, the bell signaling for the next class had rung.

"Damn, I hate English. It's even harder than tying a cherry knot in your mouth." Orca complained as she headed off to her scheduled class.

After they went off to their classes, they haven't seen each other until the end of the day.

xXxXxXxXxXx

"I wanted to ask what would've happened if someone else walks in during 'playtime'?" Kuosu managed after they met up in Dorimu's dorm.

"Oh, the game pauses until the others leave, if the player leaves with them, well... The mother will call you back to play 'cause she can't find her little girl no matter how hard she searches. Let's just say, once the game starts, the mother will be unable to see the little girl anymore. Only when you find her, will she be able to see her daughter again." Dorimu explained, a stick of strawberry pocky in his mouth.

Now Kuosu knows what he has to do. He has to go back and finish the game he started. Otherwise, he might get killed for separating a family.


	3. Chapter 3

They didn't sleep at all that night, whatever happened the night before might happen again. They took turns staying awake, making sure nothing disturbs them while the others sleep. Gamma took the first turn, his mind wandering over to the mansion for a few times. Whenever he thought of the place, his heartbeat fastened. Gamma didn't know exactly how long he was up thinking about something that could've been avoided if they just didn't force Kuosu in there in the first place.

"Gamma, get some sleep." Alpha said as he shook Gamma lightly and pointed to the bed.

Gamma snapped out of his thoughts and looked around, he was still in his dorm, still by his friends. Instead of sleeping in his own bed, he decided maybe resting with one of his friends was a better option. He laid down beside Kuosu, who was currently sleeping peacefully, for the first time since the incident, and tried to sleep. However, the more he tried to sleep, the more he saw the image of the woman. Eventually, he abandoned the thought of sleep and sat up on the side he was on. Grabbing his laptop from his bag, he then proceeded to search about the woman and the daughter.

Inputting 'Hide and seek daughter' into the search bar, he hit enter and saw several results. Rolling his eyes at the top result, he scrolled to the bottom and began clicking into less popular sites.

"Why don't you click the first site that pops up?" Gamma would be lying if he said he didn't jump at Beta's question.

"Because the top results are a bunch of baloney people make up just to get page views. It usually is nothing but falsehood they claim to be true." Gamma managed out after calming his heart.

Beta didn't believe it and Gamma knew it. He scrolled back up to the top result and clicked the site just to prove her wrong. Sure enough, the site contained of several people claiming to be 'survivors' of the game. The more he read, the more upset he was. All the people there were very disrespectful towards the mother and the daughter. Calling them 'stupid' or 'slow' or even 'not worth their time'.

"Forget it." Gamma whispered and closed the website, he has had enough of their false claims.

Finally feeling drowsy, he lay back down on the bed and let sleep claim his mind. Beta looked at Gamma and recalled the last time he had actually been like this. It was when there was a suicide in their class. It was found out that whoever took their own life was bullied.

The victim of bullying was then later identified as one of Gamma's childhood friend. Whoever it was, they were not leaving the world until the truth was out. For weeks, Gamma had claimed seeing and hearing things. Of course no one believed him until things started moving on their own in their class. It wasn't something that wasn't easily forgotten.

Students then began claiming they saw and experience the same thing whenever they were near the victim's place.

o0o0o0o0o0o0o

The next morning wasn't anymore calming for any of them, even though it was their favourite day of the week. One reason, one place and one purpose they held an emotionless face most of the time. Tonight, was the night. The night they return to the mansion and try to finish what they had started. If they were to say they weren't nervous, to say they weren't scared, they would be lying to everyone.

"Tell me you slept at least for an hour last night..." Dorimu said as he sat down near Gamma.

"About 50 minutes before I woke..." Gamma replied.

It wasn't a lie, Gamma had fallen asleep for only 50 minutes before he sat upright in his bed, still startled of what they were going to do today. It was on his mind almost the whole night and he finds it hard to sleep with all the stress.

The thought of returning to the place where his best friend was almost killed was killing him. He would blame himself if he couldn't do anything to save his friend.

"You know he doesn't blame you right?" Gamma's head shot up as he heard Dorimu's question.

"What?" Dorimu looked over to the boy beside him.

"He doesn't blame you for any of this, told me it was his own fault he got involved in this mess. If he just had the courage to turn down whatever was dared for him to do, he wouldn't be in this mess. Honestly, no one knew it would've gone this far." Gamma let out a sigh as Dorimu finished.

He remembered that day clearly, there were rumours of the house being haunted but they didn't believe it. They wanted to prove everyone wrong. Kuosu had followed them for the sake of wanting to be part of a group. To be part of a circle of friends that actually cared for others.

It wasn't Kuosu's fault, it was theirs. No matter how hard people had told them it wasn't their fault, how they couldn't have known. Gamma still blames himself, Alpha and Beta for putting Kuosu in this situation. They pushed him into this, they forced him into something unknown and lied to him.

"It should've been me." he said.

"It should've been me who was cursed. We pushed him to do something we didn't even dare and lied to him by saying it's some stupid initiation." Gamma didn't realize he was crying until he felt the tears running.

The two boys didn't realize but someone else was listening. That person however, didn't blame Gamma for what ever happened to him. He blamed himself for being weak whenever he was dared to do something. He blamed himself for not standing up for himself.

0o0o0o0o0o0

"You're going to what?!" Gamma was quite surprised at Zanark's reaction.

He had explained his plan to Zanark and how he was going to go back to the mansion. Zanark had no reaction at first, but then he looked as if he had been hit by a car, twice.

"It's the only way for them to leave Kuosu alone." Gamma explained yet again.

Zanark was on board with helping Kuosu but even he wasn't brave enough to visit the place where people actually die.

"You do know what happens if he loses, right?" Gamma shuddered and nodded.

Whoever loses the game has two choices, they either die, or they take the little girl's place. The people before all chose to die. It was believed that they think dying is better than having to wander the place all eternity and being alone.

"So, you in or not?" Gamma needed an answer and he needed the answer now.

After thinking over his choices, Zanark let out a sigh and nodded.

"I'm in, I may not be a friend of Kuosu's but I know how much he means to you."

Seeing Gamma smile had brightened up the rest of Zanark's day.

If Kuosu was going to go down with this, it might as well be with his friends.


End file.
